Today marks the third major iteration of this blog since its inception in 2002. On the outside there is nothing interesting about the new design - it's intentionally plain. The really exciting thing (to me, at least) is what you can't see: joehewitt.com is now 100% Python-powered.

The blog had previously been running on Movable Type (Perl) with some PHP around it. I'm really a Python guy, so that kind of irritated me. I've always wanted to use the site as an experimental platform for new publishing ideas, but not so much that I wanted to suffer through PHP or Perl to do it. Now the blog is a very simple Django application which I can easily enhance at a moment's notice. This was my first Django app and I can say without qualification that Django rocks. It was so easy that I wrote most of the code on airplanes while flying across the country.

Another change is that I have decided to go without comments this time around. I think that I've self-censored a lot of potentially interesting blog posts because I didn't want to get into arguments with readers in the comments. I'd like to blog because it helps me find clarity in my thoughts and improve as a writer, not because I want to entertain or persuade anyone.